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January 3, 2011

Submitting posts to Digg - Questions and Thoughts

I've been a member of Digg for a while now, but I haven't really used it much. Part of me wonders if that should change, so I'm checking things out a little bit and deciding whether I want to jump into the waters or not.

For those of you who don't know, Digg is a sharing site, where users can share articles, blog posts, and other things they find on the Internet that they think are interesting, cool, or just something they feel their followers should know about. People set up accounts there, and can follow (and be followed by) other Digg users. If somebody follows you, then what you Digg will show up on their home page.

If you've explored the web at all, whether blogs, news sites, or what have you, you've probably seen something at the bottom of an article that says you can "Digg" it. That makes it easy for people to do it, because the only other way is to go to Digg and manually cut and paste the URL. Not fun.

So anyway, back to my thinking. I've got a couple of thoughts/questions to discuss.
1) For those of you who have Digg accounts (or feel free to substitute any of the others), how often do you use it? Do you go to Digg a lot and see what the people you're following are up to? Do you submit a lot of articles to Digg? How often? Just when the spirit moves you, or are you pretty diligent about Digging stuff you like?

I'm going to try and be a bit more diligent about sharing stuff that I like, as I've been pretty lax about it. Those of you following me on Digg (and who are doing it for more than just because we're friends) have been missing out on some good stuff I've been reading. I am going to try and rectify that.

Without spamming, of course.

2) What's your opinion of groups designed to get your posts Diggs? In much the same vein as the "I'll follow your blog if you follow mine," way of thinking, there are groups out there where you submit every post you make to the group, with the design that people in the group will Digg it. In return, you're expected to Digg posts that others submit to the group.

It strikes me as kind of wrong to do this, even with the caveat that you should "only Digg the articles you really like" on the list. What if you don't like any of them? And if the group has 400+ members? Are you really expected to read everything?

I guess I should explain for those who are still reading and don't know how this works. The more Diggs you get, the higher your post moves on the Digg site for other people (people who *aren't* following you) to see. It's a way to judge popularity, and gaming the system like this goes against that idea, I think. I think such popularity should be organic, not manufactured.

Your thoughts?

3) Finally, and kind of along the same lines, what do you think about Digging your own stuff? It may seem hypocritical, but I'm actually a proponent of Digging your own stuff. There's nothing wrong with a bit of self-promotion, as long as that's not your sole purpose for doing things. If you're on Twitter and the only thing you tweet is stuff advertising yourself, then that's lame. But if you're advertising yourself *and* interacting, what's wrong with that?

There has been a lot of discussion on this online over the last few years (I found this article, and its comment string, interesting). Some people consider *any* self-promotion on a site like this (or even Twitter) as wrong, but I have to ask. If you're not going to promote yourself, how else is anybody going to know you're out there?

Again, though, there should be more to you than self-promotion. Or people are going to ignore you.

And rightfully so.

Finally, I have a request for you, my reader(s). You may have noticed the "Digg" button at the bottom of all my posts. That's an example of what I was talking about above, a way that makes it easy for users to Digg stuff without much effort.

I hate those people who, on every post, ask you to Digg their post/article/whatever. Much like Presidential speeches, less is more. If everything's important enough for a speech, then nothing's that important.

The same with Digg requests. If you want people to Digg everything you write, then you're probably not writing anything worth Digging.

But I do want to ask that, if you find something on this site worthy, please consider Digging it. It's another way for you to spread the word that you liked something I wrote.

And I know I'd be happy with any of the extra traffic (if any) it would drive here.

I only ask you to *consider* Digging every post. After reading it, if you decide it's worth it, click that button. If it's ok but nothing special, then don't. And if it's *really* bad, consider Digging it so everybody can laugh at me.

(What, that won't work? Ok, well, I tried)

It would make me happy if you did that.

Also, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! Please leave a comment if you have anything you want to share.